Briefly: Construction accident temporarily disrupts e-mail service

On Nov. 25 at 7:15 a.m., a construction crew for a project unaffiliated with the University accidentally damaged a major fiber-optic line between the central and medical campuses. The incident cut the medical campus off from voice and data services — including e-mail — for about three hours while Internet Technology Services worked to reroute network traffic. Joseph Paolillo, senior director of infrastructure services, said in an e-mail that the University had planned to accommodate the construction project by relocating the optic cable during off hours. A partial relocation occurred earlier in November, but the accident damaged a section of the cable they had planned to relocate next weekend. ITS restored the University Answering and Help Desk telephone services by 12:36 p.m., and the University’s network fiber vendor completed repairs on the damaged cable by 9:45 p.m. “Events such as this point out the increasing criticality of Yale’s voice and data networks to the functioning of the University,” Paolillo said. “We are constantly evaluating our design architecture and operational plans to provide a cost-effective level of reliability and redundancy.”